Police fail to see 4 in 10 victims

Police are failing to see four in 10 crime victims because they are too bogged
down in paperwork, according to a top officer.

By Christopher Hope, Home Affairs Editor

2:13PM BST 23 Oct 2008

Matt Baggott, who is in charge of national neighbourhood policing, said frontline officers should be allowed to take common-sense decisions about their work, in a “structured anarchy” against onerous Government regulations which stop them doing their jobs.

Speaking at a conference organised by the National Policing Improvement Agency, Mr Baggott, who is in charge of national neighbourhood policing for Acpo, said 40 per cent of victims were not seeing a police officer, mostly for low level crimes like anti-social behaviour and theft.

He said: “Why should police officers and constables not be liberated from the fog of administration. We need to have some structured anarchy. We don’t have time to do the job properly. There are no excuses about money - this is about leadership.

“Most people do not speak to 40 per cent of victims. We want 100 per cent of victims to be visited. We have to free up space or we won’t achieve that. They should do the work and worry about the policy later.”

A paper-trail was necessary for serious crimes, but for less serious investigations, police officers should be made freer to take their own decisions and use their initiative.

He said: “If it does not make sense, take it away. The standard can be delivered without the rigid processes that go with it.”

Mr Baggott, chief constable of Leicestershire Police since 2002, said officers should be empowered like local GPs, who are left in the most part left to their own device and free to use their judgement.

Mr Baggott, who became chief constable in 2002 after a 20 year stint with the Metropolitan Police, said that rather than judging police forces by targets, they should be rated by follow-up phone calls as part of a customer service survey.

This would greatly improve people’s impression of the police. Mr Baggott said that research by the NPIA had found that it takes “14 good encounters” to make up for the “ripple effect” caused by one person’s bad experience with the police.

The 140,000 sworn officers in England and Wales should be treated like semi-automonous GPs. He said: “I don’t see audit checks to see whether the hand-writing of GPs is legible.”

Mr Baggott also called for more cross-agency co-operation, which could see prisoners who are being freed from jail met by local beat officers and “smothered” in support by local support groups to stop them reoffending.

Currently seven out of 10 released prisoners go on to commit more crimes, he said.

The call was welcomed by Jan Berry, the former chairman of the Police Federation and now Home Office’s secretary Jacqui Smith’s adviser on axing police red tape.

Miss Berry said that Mr Baggotts’ comments were “inspirational”. She said: “The police have to have rules, but those rules have to be the right rules.

“We have got too many people complying with sets of rules that are not doing anything for neighbourhood safety.”

There were real fears that the bonfire of police red tape, which was signalled in a report by Sir Ronnie Flanagan earlier this year, was losing momentum.

She said: “It is taking too long to introduce [change] and push it through the system. You lose the momentum. It has got to get through to the service much quicker.”

Home Office figures have shown that police are wasting more than a third of their days doing paperwork instead of fighting crime. Some spent nearly four hours in every eight-hour shift filling in forms rather than on the beat.

The figures covered the three years to the end of March last year - before a report from Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the chief inspector of constabulary, was published into police bureaucracy.

He recommended stripping back red tape to release up to seven million hours of police time every year - the equivalent of 3,500 officers.

Sir Ronnie, the HM Inspector of Constabulary, recommended stripping back red tape to release up to seven million hours of police time every year - the equivalent of 3,500 officers.